[whatwg] style='' on every element

[Ian Hickson]

On Fri, 4 May 2007, Henri Sivonen wrote:
>
> Re: http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20070503
> 
> First, I hope that we are in agreement that the following are realities:
>  * Browsers will have to support style='' on every element.

Yes.


>  * When you make something a critical mass of authors really want to do 
> non-conforming because it is bad, the authors find worse workarounds 
> that are not caught by checkers. Case study: target='' vs. 
> window.open().

Yes. style="" is allowed everywhere now.


>  * <font> with a transparent content model is not backwards-compatible 
> with existing Gecko text/html parsing.

Ok. <font> is gone.


>  * When a conformance definition outlaws something that works and that a 
> critical mass of authors want to do, the respect for the conformance 
> definition as a whole is diluted.

To some extent, though if what they want to do is bad, e.g. using tables 
for layout, or not configuring their servers (and thus sending their PNG 
images as text/html or their videos as text/plain), then it is still worth 
calling it out as errorneous.


>  * Defining two conformance levels (ideal and realistic) doesn't 
> eradicate the difference of realistic and idealistic. Case study: Strict 
> and Transitional.

I don't think Strict vs Transitional is equivalent to what I want to do.

With Strict vs Transitional, you declare your intent, and then the 
validator tells you you got it right.

What I want is that you don't declare intent, and the validator tells you 
if you got an A+ or a B. Both passing grades, but one is better than the 
other. It's a different attitude, IMHO.


>  * The way <font style=''> has been currently drafted is a political failure,
> because instead of attaching the stigma of <font> to style='' it has attached
> the stigma of <font> to HTML5.

n/a now.


>  * As implemented, style='' doesn't provide for media query-scoped styling.

Right, we have <style scoped> for that.


[ skipping now inapplicable issues ]


> I suggest we deal with this by using conformance checker warnings as 
> opposed to errors.

Showing a warning for style="", and giving a differnt conclusion when 
there are zero warnings of this nature, would be a good way of doing it 
IMHO.


On Fri, 4 May 2007, Michel Fortin wrote:
> 
> I don't think it's a good idea to create a WYSIWYG signature that 
> changes the conformance checkers behaviour.

I agree. I think that pragmas that affect conformance checkers are bad, 
as you can't know if they were intended to be included or not. Better to 
allow the conformance checker to have equivalent UI.


On Fri, 4 May 2007, Jon Barnett wrote:
> 
> It's worth nothing how browsers currently handle setting a property using
> someelement.style:
> someelement.style.border = "1px solid";
> alert(someelement.parentNode.innerHTML);
> 
> IE, Firefox, and Opera all show the "border" property as part of the 
> style attribute (even if the style attribute wasn't already set).  
> Firefox uses the "border" property, IE uses "border-left", 
> "border-right", etc.  Opera doesn't use any shortcut properties and uses 
> "border-left-style", etc. Konqueror does apply the border, but doesn't 
> reflect that property in the innerHTML.  I'm not sure how important any 
> of this is.

I don't think this is in scope for HTML5. Probably a CSSOM issue.


I have omitted much of the rest of the thread, as the spec changed quite a 
bit since the thread existed. Please let me know if you don't like the 
current compromise in the spec.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'